Anyways, such as it is, here’s my acceptance speech in absentia for my first Locus Award, for Artist of the Year (2007):

“As much as I wanted to be here today and share the good times and splendid conversations with you all, I just couldn’t manage to squeeze any time to do so out of my crazy schedule. As some of you may know, I’m deep into sculpting and pouring the bronze for a fountain installation based on ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream.’ Right now my co-workers and I are wrestling with the nine foot figure of Titania, who is proving to be a very demanding Queen of the Faeries indeed.

Surprised doesn’t say half of what I feel right now. I’m humbled actually, to, at least metaphorically, be standing in the midst of the fine group of writers and artists that have won these current awards, as well as all those that have preceeded us.

Day after day every one of the nominated artists (and many more besides) face the same scary, blank sheet of paper that I do. We all struggle to scribe some sort of cohesive marks onto paper or canvas or whatever the chosen medium is. All of us have the same goal: that of translating our inner visions onto that surface and thus sharing it with you, the reader. Sometimes the artist that pursues that goal can be more successful than not. This year, judging by this gracious award, I’ve been having a very good time.

Thank you all very much.”

And here’s a link to the full list of winners:

http://www.locusmag.com/2008/Locus_Awards_Winners.html

Thank you all very much.”

Charles

The opportunity arose because I was asked to be a part of a group effort to help raise needed funds for the ‘Totoro’s Forest’ project (more on that a bit later). I can still remember the magic of first viewing ‘My Neighbor Totoro’, so many years ago that it was only available on pirated Japanese language VHS tapes. The director’s art and story however completely transcended any language barrier there might have been. I thought then and I am even more certain now, that the world would be a better place if there were more minds like Mr. Miyazaki’s in it.

Sayama Forest, located outside of Tokyo, served as the inspiration for this exceptional film (my very favorite movie, animated or otherwise). Over the intervening years it has become encroached upon by housing developments. For many years now there has been an on-going effort from Mr, Miyazaki and the Totoro Forest Foundation that he established to purchase as much as possible of the acreage there and place it into a national trust.

Now, Pixar art director, Dice Tsutsumi has asked a group of artists to “paint their own personal Totoros”. Over a hundred artists, mostly from the animation field have responded. A exhibition of some 60 of these pieces will be held at the San Francisco Cartoon Art Museum this fall. A handsome art book will follow. All of the art will be auctioned and whatever profit is raised from those sales as well as the book will all go to the foundation and the purchase of more of that sublime landscape.

All the very amazing art for the  ‘Totoro Forest Project’ is now available to be viewed:

 http://totoroforestproject.org/

Do yourself a favor and go take a long look at all the lovely images over there!

I want to thank Dice and more importantly Mr. Miyazaki for letting me play in his lovely sandbox and hopefully give some of that magic back to the world.

The extensive website featuring most of this newly created and crazy good artwork will go live soon and I’ll provide a link to it then.

Enjoy,

Charles

The next day the sculpture team started pulling the clay off and stripping the figure down to her not as substantial as we had hoped metal armature. Under all the damaged clay and wire we discovered that the central 2 inch steel supporting pipe had broken under the weight of the clay. This time around we welded additional steel support bars onto that pipe as well as the much more solidly constructed metal framework.

This was again covered in layers of rolled newspaper then shrink wrap and wax to prep it for the re-application of all that clay. This time our metal skeleton held up and after another two months of patient manipulation of clay Titania began to take shape. Again!

She’s looks sort of like an Alien Queen here, doesn’t she?

The only piece we had managed to save from her previous incarnation was Titania’s face which I reapplied to the figure. Now all she needs is a bit of hair to cover her brow…

Lordy, is that leg wrong! David Spence, my co-sculptor worked his artistic magic on that bit of anatomy and finally got it just right. Of course, we couldn’t have managed without the help of first assistant supreme Liam Wolverton, who knew just where to put that piece of clay!

Pretty soon, there she was, all 9 feet and 1,000 pounds of clay of her…

We convinced the proprietor of our local wine store, Cathy Rose, that her features would make for a most beautiful Fairy Queen. Working from several photographs of her I sculpted a face that was welcoming but with just a touch of the haughtiness that I associate with Her Majesty, Queen Titania.

Then, after a few last touches like the added garland of roses in her hair we were finished, at least with the fun part: the sculpting.

Next comes the mold …

Our Queen is then covered in layer after layer of truly vile smelling rubber mold. After that a layer of tin foil is pressed over that same form, followed by an additional layer of hard rubber. After all those elements have cured the segments that you see here will be carefully labeled and then cut apart. Each one of those segments will then have about a quarter inch of hot wax poured into it and allowed to cool and harden. Those wax sections are peeled off the rubber molds and then dipped into a liquid ceramic, multiple times. After those ceramic molds harden they will be placed into ovens where the wax is melted out, leaving room for the poured bronze to replace it. After all those sections of bronze are finished they will be welded together and then the joints left by that welding process will need to be ground down.

Its just as easy as that!

In my next post I’ll show a step by step of the bronze pouring process.

Enjoy,

Charles

And the back:

These drawings were followed by a small 3D sketch, called a maquette in sculptural terms and executed in sculpy:

These were submitted for approval to both the institution that commissioned the piece, The Barter Theater Foundation and the Architectural Review Board of the town of Abingdon VA where it will be built.

About two years ago we began the long process that leads to a finished bronze. David decided rather than cut granite being used for the various boulders around the structure that we would use real boulders and make casts of those, to later be poured in bronze.

A great idea that later became both a blessing and a curse. Here’s assistant Bill Thompson with the chosen boulders. He and David then covered these stones with rubber molds from which, at a later date, wax forms were poured. Once in the wax, the shapes were adjusted to suite our needs, then cast into bronze replicas of those same rocks.

Back in the studio David and I started on the two foxes, first molding their forms in clay. He would work on one end, while I worked on the other. When either of us ran into a dead end of “this doesn’t look quite right” we would shift around and a fresh eye and hand would take over. Oh, the conversations that we had…

Slowly the figures would emerge from the plasticine clay. A fox one day…

A hare the next. For reference, the studio space was blanketed in downloaded printouts, most of them found during long sessions on Google image searches of the animals we needed. A hare, for instance, is quite different in form than the more common bunny rabbit.

Then there was that grinning trickster, Puck.

From this point the clay figure was cut into several sections. These sections were painted with many, many layers of rubber mold solution, from which a wax replica was poured. Any adjustments that are needed are executed in that malleable wax. The wax replica was dipped multiple times into ceramic material to form a hard mold. The wax was burned out and later bronze poured into the mold. What is left is various sections of your intended piece that will have to be welded back together. After those weld marks were ground down and smoothed out the reassembled figure was painted with layers of patina (liquid acids that produce various colors on the surface of the bronze). Here then is our Puck, finally in place at the site of the fountain:

As well as all of his animal companions and the boulders that they sit on.

That column in the middle of the fountain space is where, eventually, the tree and figure of Titania will be placed. That central part of the fountain will rise to 16 feet in height.

While the tree section is being cast into bronze we have been given a space at the Barter Theater’s scene shop, courtesy of Rick Rose and Mark DeVol, to construct the 9 ft. figure of the Fairy Queen has made many demands of us so far. As you can imagine, a figure that large demands quite a bit of infrastructure underneath to support the hundreds of pounds of clay used to articulate her features.

An elaborate structure of steel pipe, copper tubing and wire mesh is used to articulate her skeleton. Sometimes The Queen got unruly and a few further adjustments needed to be made.

But after offering a certain amount of ceremonial blood letting (cuts and slices from the very sharp ends of all that wire) she began to take a bit of shape.

And assume her proper features.

We were, perhaps, a little more than a week away from completion when the faeries began to laugh at us mere mortals. I was working below the face you see above and heard a series of small cracks. I looked up and Queen Titania slowly leaned forward, bending over as if to kiss me perhaps? But that’s 300 or so pounds of clay we’re talking about. A central steel pipe had snapped and down she came, to rest gently on a scaffolding that I quickly swung under her form.

Now, two days later, the clay has been stripped off and a new, and much, much sturdier structure of steel rebar has been welded into place.

This afternoon I’ll start over again.

In the meantime, one of her fairy attendants has been completed and is wending her way into her final bronze form, soon to be joined by another two such companions. The purple wings that you see here are just place holders.

The completed sculpture is slated to unveiled this June, I hope that some of you at least can make it down for the festivities. And I’ll, of course, keep you up to date by posts on this blog.

Best,

Charles

‘A Gift from the Spring’ was as it says a birthday gift to my friend, the writer, Delia Sherman. As it happens she just wrote about the piece on her live journal:

 http://deliasherman.livejournal.com/26542.html

The painting and the short story writen for it are a part of a series  of art and story collaborations by some of my favorite authors that have and will be running, as each short story is completed, in Realms of Fantasy magazine over the next year or so. The  authors so far include Charles de Lint  (June 2007), Holly Black (October 2007), Delia Sherman (the current issue , April 2008), Elizabeth Hand, Jeffrey Ford and Neil Gaiman.

Enjoy,

Charles

And then my inks. Here I tried out a dry brush technique using a hand made mixture of brown and black FW inks and a sable brush. At first I was only going to use this technique for Thomas’ cloak but it was  working so well that I just kept on going over the whole surface. I liked how it came out quite a bit.

As I do with all my painted work ,I then I overlaid that with many, many layers  of FW ink, diluted so that the colors were fairly  transparent. This allows me to continually adjust the hue and saturation of my color pallet  over the entire surface of the piece. These adjustments are completely instinctual, learned from many years of slapping paint down onto paper, as I have absolutely no knowledge of institutional color theory. Here is the completed image:

I choose to set the scene in  that most magical and  liminal time between sunset and dark. If you look hard enough, between the horse’s legs, the road they are about to take to fair Elfland can be seen, glimmering in the dusk.

Enjoy,

Charles

http://www.bartertheater.com/shows/

These next two images are for painted backdrops (18 x 30 ft) that will start to reveal the technicolor wonders of Neverland.

These two were made into separate hard drops (18 ft high), that will enter stage left and right. And yes, there ARE faeries scampering about amongst those leaves!

And finally, the NeverTree and the Home Under the Ground that will be reveled through progressive scenes during the length of the play. The tree itself is a painted backdrop, approximately 24 wide by 18 ft high. The large Sun and clouds drop and the two smaller trees above will be positioned behind it. Then the space inside the Home Under the Ground is actually cut out (8 x 14 ft) allowing room for Peter, the Lost Boys and Wendy to interact.

It was, of course, a lot of work, but also really fun to re-imagine one of my favorite plays.

Before I go, I want to thank Katie Brown, Ben Nicholson, Derek, D.R, Kyle, Mark, Cheri and all the other hard working folks at the Barter Scene shop for turning my scribbles into hard cold ‘reality’ and finally Rick Rose for asking in the first place.

Enjoy!

Charles

Pretty isn’t it?

But the orders are in on, The Fairy Princess, produced by Dark Horse and they are to be frank, exceptionally lousy. Perhaps because those orders were, for the most part, solicited through the Diamond Previews catalog I’m not totally surprised, as the big sellers there tend to always be big muscles, big breasts or big guns and this piece certainly has none of those elements. David Scroogy and Gentle Giant have done an exceptional job of seeing my vision through a lengthy pre-production process but now, with these orders, we’re faced with either canceling the piece or coming to my fans with hat in hand. I, quite frankly, love this piece and want to see it actualized. So if you follow the link here:

http://www.greenmanpress.com/princess.html

you can see many more views of the piece and check out all the ordering details. Please be aware that none of these orders will be processed until we manage to break even or its determined that we are forced to cancel the project. You will then be notified of either when the sculpture can be expected to ship or that your charge has been canceled.

Hope you can help out!

Cheers,
Charles

Deadlines, deadlines. Charles certainly has ‘em. He’s at the drawing board now, so here is The Wife typing a post. The website has been down and there is a month of news to summarize and post, but that will have to wait another day (sorry).

TODAY is the release of the “Stardust” DVD so we wanted to let you know. It’s yet another wonderful gift item for friends and family! Some friends of ours are having a special Stardust Release Party for us, with food, drink and a state-of-the-art entertainment center - we are quite excited.

Also, if you are lucky enough to live in a town that has a Borders Bookstore, you can get an exclusive version that includes a booklet of Charles’ art with the DVD. Only at Borders, though. Otherwise any Target, Walmart, B&N, or movie store worth their salt should have it.

Cheers!
Karen

A very big thank you goes out to Robert, Emilio and Kelly for putting in all the enormous amount of hard work that it takes to organize an event like this. I will be there next year for sure.

That’s me with Jo Wall and Linda Ravenscroft (Hello sweetie!) just in front of the Faerie Magazine booth.

All that fae energy certainly helped to make the four-square gray convention walls that surrounded us disappear from time to time. Least you think that events like this only happen once a year they don’t. All over the country and the the UK they are springing up more and more often. The Faerieworld Festivals in Portland are going very strong and I’m planning to sit down at the May Day Faerie festival held each spring (for the last 15 years) at the Spoutwood Farm in Glenn Rock PA over the May day weekend next year.
www.fairiefestival.net
See you all there,

Charles